A little more than 14 years ago, I came out of a photo shoot at the “Cat and the Dog” club that had just opened. On Karlibach, through the multitudes of clubbers who had not yet undergone selection, I saw a very young woman who looked as if a thousand tigers were standing behind her and guarding her. Satisfied she tied her bike to the post. When she turned her beauty hit me and forgot all the noise fatigue and pain. At first glance it was clear that there was nothing ordinary about her. Not just beauty. hidden power. I zoomed in on her with a direct shot and demanded to take a picture of her. She didn’t have to tell me “no”. Her embarrassment came between us like a wall and spoke for her. And not in whispers.
Somehow she cooperated with me. Consistency is a necessary quality for street photography. The job is to make a stranger you’ve just met believe you have a vision, that you know who he is and where he’s going, and sell it to him. I insisted that what I see in her is real. And now she is Stella Gott, a music producer, artist and singer, a daughter of Assaf Amdorsky, part of a new wave of mature indie women with that exact energy that only rockers have in their soul.
A thousand tigers guard her. Stella Gut (photo: Arla Ha’Tel Bo’ar)
“I came to Tel Aviv alone at the age of 19,” Gut tells me, “I was a very innocent but also unrestrained suburban girl. I wasn’t afraid of anything. I quickly got into the nightlife and met people there who are my best friends to this day. I haven’t left Tel Aviv 14 A year except for one year in New York, until a year ago. I left the city in favor of the village, in favor of solitude, silence and the mountains. I’m tired of getting up every morning to concrete and noise. I live on the line between Emek Elah and Tel Aviv and the city keeps me on edge. It’s necessary.
Hebrew does not show mercy. Stella Gut (photo: Arla Ha’Tel Bo’ar)
“I’ve been performing and writing songs since I can remember. I was always afraid to take it all the way. It took me many years to believe and want people to connect with me and what I do. As a child I sang in a choir, learned piano and guitar and wrote songs and stories. I grew up listening to Russian bard songs that my parents And their friends would sing. My mom was always in the center with the classical guitar and the most powerful voice in the world. A year ago, I released my first album with songs in Hebrew, ‘So Healing’, after more than a decade of creating in English in all kinds of projects (NEXUS, Bill & Murray, Wounded Ladies). In the album, I was able to break this barrier of fear of connection, thanks to the language. Since then, writing in Hebrew has become the default, the first place I go to, even though it is much less compassionate than English.
“On ‘Kaka Merfaim’ I worked a lot alone before bringing musicians and co-producers into the picture. I wanted to understand my vision without interruptions. After most of the songs were on their feet, I started inviting musicians I like and they introduced new layers. This is the great magic of working with people. I decided that I wanted a different experience of creation, together. From there, what started as a performance group became an intimate group that works on new songs, from the texts to the arrangements. The group includes Oded Farah (drums), Noam Rotem (guitar) and Viniv Dagan (bass). Some of the materials They will be played for the first time this year at a concert at the Piano Festival, where we will also host Sivan Shavit, one of my favorite writers. I couldn’t have asked for a more precise connection than this for this concert, which is also my last concert before I go on temporary hiatus and become a mother.”
There is an impossible mixture of pain and hope in her gaze. This is not something that happens often in Israel, but in her case, good won. Since that first chance encounter, with each encounter my feeling about her grew stronger. We will see her again. We will hear her again. It didn’t surprise me at all, then, to meet her a few years later in Assaf Amdorski’s studio in Florentine, making her way to the top of the local music scene Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. She has long ceased to be an innocent and unrestrained girl from the suburbs, and the feeling is still that the Stella Gut phenomenon has only just begun and there is something to wait for.
“I have always lived with the feeling that who I am is not enough,” she surprises me with her confession, “and the fact that the environment has always reacted to my exterior only strengthened this feeling for me. I was afraid that there would be disappointment after the outer layer was peeled off me. That they would find out that I did not belong, not from here. I immigrated to Israel At the age of three I came from Ukraine and my reception in the country was good, but like any immigration it left scars. The work for me started from a place of pain, it was my way of dealing with it and for many years it came almost exclusively from there.
Something very Soviet. Stella Gut (photo: Arla Ha’Tel Bo’ar)
“Today I am in a different place. It is something very Soviet, to strive for some ideal that is sometimes unattainable and to be satisfied only by the difficulty. Over the years I have done a lot of self-work and I have also learned a lot from my partner, he is also an artist, and he sees things very differently from me. He softened me , taught me a different kind of discipline, from a place of perseverance and not of compulsion. One of the things that inspires me the most is watching dance. Although I create with words and sounds, movement has a very strong power on me. I hope I will still find a way to incorporate this love into my work In a more direct way. If I wasn’t a musician I would probably be an anthropologist. I would study cultures, travel around the world and observe people and their environment. Even then I would probably sing, in one way or another. That’s stronger than me.
>> Stella Gott in a special band performance, Piano Festival 2.11 (Wednesday 20:00), Kaufman Hall. More details and tickets here
>> Stella Gott on Instagram
>> Stella Gott on Facebook